Bernie Sanders, Rev. William Barber charge North Carolina activists to fight for livable wages

Senator Bernie Sanders said that there are no blue or red states when it comes to the cause of promoting a living wage during a Durham rally Thursday. 

Thursday’s event was the first stop in a three-city tour that Sanders and Rev. William J. Barber II are leading as part of a national push for a $17 minimum wage. The two men appeared with several local leaders and advocates to discuss the conditions working people are forced to live under due to earning low wages.

Locals encouraged the North Carolina government to raise the minimum wage above the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Speakers cited personal experience with low wages, while Sanders addressed the condition of the U.S. economy.

Sanders addressed the crowd virtually from Washington D.C. due to the debt ceiling vote.

Chris Daugherty, a representative of the Union of Southern Service Workers and an employee at Springhill Suites by Marriot in Durham, spoke about his experience as someone who makes $13 an hour. 

“The cost of rent is skyrocketing all across Durham. I’m single, I do not have a wife and children, but I’m still struggling off $13 an hour,” Daugherty said. 

Daugherty pointed out that his friends and colleagues who do have families to support are living in impossible conditions with their current pay.

“So I wanted to ask, why is Congress allowing these corporations to pay us unlivable wages? Congress must do the right thing for workers like me. They must make it easier for us to unionize, and they must raise the minimum wage to a livable wage,” Daugherty said. 

According to the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, the average single-parent household with one child has to earn $29.75 to meet livable wage standards. 

Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam said that the inaction on wages in the state of North Carolina is a policy choice. 

“The state is not doing its job when one in five North Carolinian children is living in poverty. The state is not doing its job when the minimum wage has been stagnant in North Carolina for 14 years. The state is not doing its job when that wage is $7.25 an hour, and what we need to make a living income in Durham County is now $23 an hour,” Allam said. 

Barber, the former leader of the North Carolina NAACP, founder of the Moral Mondays movement, and current head of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale University, said that employment with low wages is just a modern form of slavery.

“Minimum wages aren’t a far-left idea, they are a fundamental moral issue,” Barber said. 

“It’s wrong that we call workers essential during the pandemic, but then we turn around and treat them like they’re expendable,” he said.

Despite its supermajority dominance of both the North Carolina House and the Senate, the state Republican Party attacked Barber after the event by referring to him in a tweet as a “poverty pimp” — a move that, as Raleigh’s News & Observer reported, drew swift and widespread condemnation.

In his remarks, Sen. Sanders said that raising the federal minimum wage should not be seen as a radical idea. 

“Here is the simple truth, the reverend just stated it, in my view, there is no such thing as a blue state or a red state. I don’t believe that for a second,” Sanders said.

“When working people, whether they’re Black, White, Latino and Native American, gay or straight-when we stand together there is one state.”

Sanders said that the economy has never been better for the top 1% of earners in our country, but things are completely different. 

“Today while more and more working-class Americans are unable to afford the healthcare and prescription drugs they need, three people three multi-billionaires own more wealth than the bottom half of American society, 165 million people,” Sanders said.

The rally to raise the wage tour will continue with Sen. Sanders and Rev. Barber in Nashville, TN on Friday and Charleston, S.C. on Saturday.